North Texas' Own.

The Satans Of Soft Rock Begin Unveiling Tracks From Their First Full-Length.

With the changeover to a more digitally-oriented music business model, we've in turn changed a lot of the ways in which music is distributed — as well as the concept of what an album even is.

For instance: When not bound by the 80-minute confines of a physical disc an artists can, theoretically, put out “albums” that are as long as they feel necessary. On the other hand, in the now MP3-driven world, fewer consumers are buying entire albums anyway, leading to a surge in bands simply opting to release singles over the standard full-length album format.

More recently, we've noticed bands choosing to release their albums incrementally. And why not? The new, big rule in the digital music game, it seems, is that there ain't no rules.

Take the Denton-based outfit Tony Ferraro and the Satans of Soft Rock, for example. Their current effort, Friend of Man and Beast Alike, is being released in this very way.

Last month, the band released their album's first two tracks, with the promise of two more being unveiled in the coming weeks. Though not really all that Satanic — and not necessarily what you would call “soft rock” (at least not by the standard John Mayer definition) — the full band does an admirable job filling out the simple structures of Ferraro's prolific catalog.

Sometimes, it's not so much about what is being played as it's about how it's played. And, with songs like these, dynamics and arrangement are of added importance.

Ferraro's hired guns — which include Ryan Becker on guitar, Chris Gomez on keys, David Howard on bass and Justin Collins on drums — are perfect for executing the subtleties in his songs in this way, each having played in at least a half dozen other Denton bands, many of which have also included Ferraro himself.

Becker can almost instinctively pull of Ferraro's tunes at this point, having played with Ferraro in The Treelines, Last Joke, Eaton Lake Tonics, Hares on the Mountain and Fate Lions, not to mention a few others we're probably leaving out. In any case, their comfort in working with one other is evident no matter what project they're currently working on.

Stream the album's first two tracks at the end of this post, and download the first single, “Satanic Verses,” from the group's BandCamp page.